W. H. Auden: Trending quotes

“One can only blaspheme if one believes.”

Funeral Blues (1936)

“Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.”

"Concerning the Unpredictable", p. 472
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

“I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.”

A misquotation of a haiku by Auden found elsewhere on this page ("Thoughts of his own death" etc.)
Misattributed
Variant: Thoughts of his own death,
like the distant roll
of thunder at a picnic.

“To some degree every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.”

As I Walked Out One Evening (1937)

“Genealogies are admirable things, provided they do not encourage the curious delusion that some families are older than others.”

"American Poetry", p. 367
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

“In general, when reading a scholarly critic, one profits more from his quotations than from his comments.”

"As It Seemed to Us", p. 498
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

“I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.”

"Reading", p. 9
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

W. H. Auden September 1, 1939

Source: September 1, 1939 (1939), Lines 1–11

“I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.”

“In any modern city, a great deal of our energy has to be expended in not seeing, not hearing, not smelling. An inhabitant of New York who possessed the sensory acuteness of an African Bushman would very soon go mad.”

Source: Paris Review interview (1972), p. 266

“Put the car away; when life fails
What's the good of going to Wales?
Here am I, here are you:
But what does it mean? What are we going to do?”

"The Justice of Dame Kind", p. 464
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

“A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.”

It's no use raising a shout (1929), first published in book form in Poems (1930)

“Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.”

Source: Paris Review interview (1972), p. 251

“At first critics classified authors as Ancients, that is to say, Greek and Latin authors, and Moderns, that is to say, every post-Classical Author. Then they classified them by eras, the Augustans, the Victorians, etc., and now they classify them by decades, the writers of the '30's, '40's, etc. Very soon, it seems, they will be labeling authors, like automobiles, by the year.”

"Notes on the Comic", p. 372
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

“Let us then
Consider rather the incessant Now of
The traveler through time, his tired mind
Biased towards bigness since his body must
Exaggerate to exist, possessed by hope…”

"Reading", p. 12
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

W. H. Auden book The Age of Anxiety

Prologue
The Age of Anxiety (1948)

“Now is the age of anxiety.”

“The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.”

Widely attributed online to Auden, this phrase does not occur anywhere in his writings. It is apparently a confused recollection of the title of his long poem The Age of Anxiety (1947). (The phrase "age of anxiety" occurs only in the title of the poem, not in the text, nor in anything else by Auden.)
Misattributed

“To have a sense of sin means to feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which, however "good" I may become, remains unchanged.”

"Hic et Ille", p. 104
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

“Whatever the field under discussion, those who engage in debate must not only believe in each other's good faith, but also in their capacity to arrive at the truth.”

"The Guilty Vicarage", p. 157
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)